


one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan

by Edonohana



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Crucifixion, Dubious Consent, M/M, Managerial Skills, Mind Control, touchless orgasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:01:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28968726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: Flagg rewards Lloyd for doing a good job.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verfallen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verfallen/gifts).



The population of Las Vegas, which had been nineteen on the day they'd arrived, ticked up and up. Lloyd kept track of it in a notebook, along with everyone’s names, ages, occupations and skills, previous residence, and current address. Flagg had told him to devote one notebook to just that, because it would fill up fast. Lloyd had believed him—any disbelief had died in him the day he’d watched a door open, and felt a key become a stone—but he’d found it hard to imagine. But now that the count was creeping up on one hundred, he could picture a day when every page would be filled.

The notebooks were one of the weights Lloyd carried. The stone around his neck was another. But they didn’t feel like burdens. They steadied him like ballast (a term he didn’t know, but might now be able to remember if it was told to him), like a good meal in his belly and the weight he’d regained after a couple weeks of them. He felt stronger, more solid, more competent, smarter. Flagg had given him that.

When he was summoned to Flagg’s office, he came with his notebooks in hand, ready to pass on that they should have hot running water any hour now, a food gathering team had discovered a fully-stocked and unlooted supermarket at the edge of town, and that the man who’d staggered in half-delirious from heat exhaustion was a helicopter pilot and that Eunice Park, the paramedic who was running their infirmary until someone more qualified showed up, had said he’d be fine and would probably be able to fly in a couple days.

But Flagg waved him into silence before he’d gotten more than a couple words out. “I have a job for you, Lloyd. A very important job. It’ll require you to coordinate the disciplines of multiple fields—law, law enforcement, public event planning. And carpentry.” He laughed, a jolly laugh that invited Lloyd to join him.

Lloyd didn’t know anything about carpentry or public event planning, and all he knew about law and law enforcement, he’d learned from being on the wrong side of it. On the other hand, he didn’t know anything about medicine, either, but he’d known where to send the helicopter pilot. 

He opened his notebook, flipped through it, then looked up. “We have three cops and two security guards. One lawyer. We don’t have any carpenters, but we have a bunch of people who put carpentry down as a skill. No public event planners.”

Flagg waved that away. “That was my little joke. I’ll handle that side of it.”

“Tell me what you need to have done, and I’ll do it.”

The air conditioning had come on the week before, and the room was cool. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees lower when Flagg spoke. “I’m afraid we won’t be hitting a hundred residents quite yet, Lloyd. We’re going to be losing someone. Do you know Alan Briggs?”

Lloyd didn’t, but he found the man easily enough on page four of his notebook. “He’s living in the MGM Grand. Forty-three years old. A school counselor from Dayton, Ohio.” He couldn’t help making a face. Lloyd’s experiences with school counselors had not been pleasant ones.

“No great loss.” Flagg grinned, showing a great many gleaming teeth. Then his jaws closed with a rat-trap snap that made Lloyd jump. “He’s been rummaging through empty rooms, at night with a flashlight. He’s found quite a lot of coke and pills, and he’s been enjoying himself in secret, behind locked doors.”

Lloyd’s head jerked up, startled. Everyone who came to Vegas was told the rules, and the consequences. “And you want me to…”

“Yes, Lloyd. I want you to organize the crucifixion.”

Lloyd’s mind jumped to a little statue he’d seen hanging on some forgotten wall. Jesus and the cross had been all of a piece, roughly carved wood splashed with faded red paint. Crucifixion was a name for the thing on the wall, not something you could do to a real person. 

“You want me to take Alan Briggs and nail him to a cross?” Lloyd asked.

Flagg nodded. “And put up the cross in front of the MGM Grand, with everyone watching. Have Mr. Winks there to read the proclamation I’ve written.”

Lloyd hurriedly began to write. Mr. Winks—that was the lawyer. MGM Grand. Someone to fetch a pair of long wooden planks or poles, and someone to put them together. And then it would need to stand upright. Who knew how to make a big top-heavy thing stand up? A house-builder? Lloyd flipped through his notebook again, and found Enrique Garcia, a construction worker. He should know. Nails, they’d need nails. Runners to go around Las Vegas and make sure everyone showed up. 

As Lloyd wrote, relief seeped into him. It was all coming together. He could do it. He wouldn’t disappoint Flagg.

“You’ll need big nails,” said Flagg, his tone friendly and helpful. “Seven inches or so, and thick. More like pegs, really. They go through the wrists, between the bones. Your crucifix got that wrong. If you nail a man to a cross through the palms, his weight will tear them right through his hands and he’ll fall off.”

Lloyd was more unsettled by that little detail than by Flagg having peered into his memories. It not only made the whole thing seem more real and less like a memory of faded wood, it also sounded like Flagg was speaking from experience. But as far as Lloyd knew, no one had been crucified since Jesus. Nowadays they used lethal injections or the electric chair. 

“How does it kill you? I always wondered that. Just getting nails through your hands and feet—or wrists—wouldn’t be enough. Is it because once you’re up there, no one feeds you?”

That, he could imagine. Hanging alone, belly knotted and throat dry, ready to eat anything, _anything_ , but unable to reach for so much as a bug because his wrists were nailed down.

Quickly, Flagg said, “No. Nothing like that. Their own weight dislocates their shoulders, and it gets harder and harder to breathe. They suffocate long before they have a chance to starve.” He put a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I know you’ll do a good job of this, Lloyd. It has to be done. If we make enough of an example of him, no one will ever do it again.”

Flagg’s hand and words and trust steadied Lloyd. _A good job. A job that has to be done_. A job, that was all. A complicated, important job involving a lot of different people and different tasks, but he'd been doing things like that ever since they’d gotten to Vegas. He had all the parts of the job written down already; now he just had to put the gears in motion.

Everything came together with ease. The cops went to Alan’s room to arrest him and keep him there till Flagg was ready for him, and reported to Lloyd via walkie-talkie when they were done. Lloyd could hear Alan screaming in the background, even though he’d told the cops not to rough him up or tell him exactly what he was in for. He didn’t want Alan trying to take a dive through a plate-glass window, even if the image of him trying and bouncing off the pane like a rubber ball made Lloyd grin. 

Enrique explained that they’d need a hole lined with concrete to hold the cross, and Lloyd delegated some general workmen to go with Enrique to the hardware store to collect everything he needed, then help him build it. He gave Lloyd an estimate of two hours for the whole job, so he had a time to give to all the runners who he sent to alert everyone to gather round. Once Lloyd was done with all that, he went to the MGM Grand to supervise it all.

Flagg joined him at the appointed hour, taking in the cross and crowd and waiting hole. 

Anxiously, Lloyd said, “Does it look right? I told Enrique what you told me, but he’d never done anything like this before.”

“It looks perfect, Lloyd,” said Flagg. “You did it just right.” 

Lloyd flushed with an inner warmth at those words. No one had ever said things like that to him before he’d met Flagg. Even when he was young, when teachers occasionally tried to encourage him, they said stuff like “Good try,” and “I can see you’re working hard.” It wasn't like Flagg, who’d chosen him and lifted him up and given him hard tasks because he believe Lloyd could do them, and not just do them, but do them perfectly.

That warm glow held as Alan was dragged out screaming, and as Winky read Flagg’s proclamation aloud, and even as Alan was thrown down on to the cross. It only began to chill when Lloyd held out the hammer and the box of nails to Flagg, and Flagg shook his head. 

“No, Lloyd. Mine is the hand that decrees, not the hand that hammers. I know you’ll do it just right.” He clapped Lloyd on the back, grinning wide. “My right-hand man.”

Lloyd didn’t smile back. The hammer felt heavy in his hand, like he might drop it. Nothing in this scene was like the wooden sculpture, not Alan’s hoarse shrieks of terror, not the sweat on the foreheads of the men who pinned him down, not the silent crowd of gray-faced people. Jenny Engstrom’s gaze was fixed on Flagg’s boots, not looking at Alan at all. But Lloyd didn’t have that luxury.

Softly, Flagg said, “I chose you for a reason, Lloyd. Don’t disappoint me.”

Lloyd took a deep breath. Flagg _had_ chosen him. He’d taken him from the dark cell and let him into the light. He’d taken him from the rat tail and Trask, and fed him on blood-rare burgers he’d cooked with his own hands, in a diner that had just happened to have a full freezer and a working gas stove. He’d made Lloyd smarter, and he’d given him the tools he needed to do what he had to do. Tools like his notebooks. Tools like a hammer and a box of nails.

Lloyd set the nail between the bones of Alan’s wrist, just like he'd been taught, and brought down the hammer.

Afterward, he just wanted to go back to his room and scrub off the blood. The water would be cold, but he didn’t care. It would be refreshing, after this work under the blazing sun. And the roar and splash of the shower would drown out the echo of Alan’s screams.

But when Flagg turned to go, giving permission to the crowd to scuttle off like rats, he gave Lloyd a clap on the shoulder that became a lingering touch, steering Lloyd along with him. The screams and moans faded in the distance, and cut off entirely when they went inside. 

In the luxury of the penthouse, Lloyd only felt more conscious of how wet and filthy he was. His hands were red and sticky, his shirt was soaked through with sweat and blood, and there were grass and dirt stains on the knees of his jeans. He glanced behind him to see if he’d left a trail of footprints across the pristine floor, and was vaguely surprised to see it still clean.

Flagg was in an expansive mood, with a flush across his cheeks and his eyes sparkling with good humor. “Excellent work, Lloyd. I know that wasn’t easy for you, but you did it exactly as I said. I think that deserves a reward, don’t you?”

Lloyd didn’t want to think about it, not even long enough to get a reward. He shrugged. “Just doing my job.”

“A hard man doing a hard job in the hot sun. Does it make you hard, Lloyd?” Flagg laughed, a disconcerting titter. 

Lloyd had never felt slower in his life than when, after Flagg had stood there for several seconds waiting for him to get the joke, he finally did. He gave an uneasy laugh. “Naw. Not my thing.”

“What a shame. You could’ve been having so much fun. Still. I do want to give you a reward for your loyal service. Would you accept one?”

The reward Lloyd wanted most was to get out of there and clean up. The blood on his hands was drying. Every time he twitched his fingers, bits flaked off like paint. But the praise Flagg was giving him warmed him inside, sweet and comforting like a hot shower. “Sure. If you want. You don’t have to.”

“After a hard job like that, what a man needs is to relax. Put up his feet. Take a load off. Or blow a load.” 

The light in Flagg’s eyes was more than a sparkle. It was a glow. The pleasant warmth Lloyd had been feeling became a familiar heat, coiling in his belly and sending tendrils up his spine and down to his groin. He sucked in a startled breath as he felt himself getting hard. 

“I… Are you…?”

Solicitously, Flagg said, “You’d better sit down. This could get intense.”

Dazed, a little dizzy, Lloyd submitted as Flagg steered him to a sofa and sat him down. His hard-on was huge and throbbing. It felt like a steel rod, pushing against his jeans like it might rip through. Lloyd couldn’t think straight. He wanted to pull down his pants, but Flagg hadn’t given him permission. Flagg was fully dressed, standing over him with a grin that seemed to have too many teeth and a glow in his eyes like a fire.

That strangely unmoored lust coursed through Lloyd, building and building, until he was on the edge of orgasm. Without even planning to, he reached for his crotch, desperate to get off. 

Flagg snapped his fingers, and Lloyd’s hands dropped to his sides. They were paralyzed, lying limp and heavy as lumps of wood. His entire world narrowed to his unbearable need. He writhed on the sofa, words tumbling from his lips, barely coherent: “Please, please, let me come, just let me, please, I’ll do anything—”

“Oh, but Lloyd,” said Flagg, wagging a teasing finger. “You’d already do anything. You proved that today. You’d never say no to me, would you?”

“No,” Lloyd gasped, and groaned. “Please—please, you’re killing me!”

“I suppose this _could_ make your heart stop,” Flagg said, sounding no more than idly speculative. “Eventually. Better not risk it.”

Again, he snapped his fingers. Lloyd came so hard that his back arched away from the sofa. It was the most intense orgasm of his life, and it seemed to go on and on. He spurted into his underwear in unending jets, as if he was emptying a month’s worth of semen in a single moment. 

At last, it ended. Lloyd slumped limp against the sofa, trembling. There was none of the dozy feeling he usually had after he had sex or jerked off. He felt weak and hollow, like he was starving, even though he wasn’t hungry.

“There you go,” Flagg said, tugging him to his feet. Lloyd had to concentrate not to fall over. “That was good, wasn’t it?”

He nodded automatically. Then, seeing that Flagg expected more, he added, “Thanks.” 

“Better change your pants before anyone sees, and thinks I scared you half to death.” Flagg laughed.

Lloyd didn’t have to look down to know that the crotch of his jeans was soaking wet. He hurried out, hoping no one would see him and hoping even more that if they did, they’d draw that exact wrong conclusion. Nobody would laugh at him if they did, not because they feared retribution from him or Flagg, but because they'd be too busy thinking about what Flagg might have done to him.

He fled from the building, trying not to look at or hear the writhing, groaning thing atop the pole on the MGM Grand’s lawn. 

_Never again,_ he thought. _No one will ever do drugs here after this, so I’ll never have to crucify anyone again._

But since when had bad consequences, lethal consequences, even horrifying consequences ever stopped a junkie from using? If crucifixion had been the normal penalty for drug use, crosses would have lined the highways. 

Inside his room, he locked the door, bolted to the bathroom, and turned on the water. Blood exploded from the shower head. He flinched back with a choked scream, then realized that it was only rust. The water ran orange, then clear, then began to steam. They’d gotten the hot water on. 

Lloyd ripped off his foul clothes, threw them in the trash, and stepped into the stall. It was the first time he’d had gotten a hot shower since… He couldn’t quite remember when. All his life before Flagg was hazier than everything after. Since some time before Captain Trips, he guessed. And he’d never enjoyed his prison showers. He was always thinking of jokes about bending over to pick up the soap and that the only part that wasn’t true was that no one bothered to wait for their victim to bend over. That water had never been more than a lukewarm drip, anyway. 

This water was hot enough to make his skin turn red, with pressure high enough to feel like a million little punches. It hurt and it felt good, but the important thing was that if he showered long enough and scrubbed hard enough, he might get clean. 

Lloyd stood in the shower, scrubbing and scrubbing, for a long time. After a while, the water went cold. But the stone on his chest stayed hot as a seven-inch nail in the Vegas sun. 


End file.
